


Loud, Dumb, and Other Names for It

by Mortimer_Dead_Sea



Series: Fuck Stephen King: Mort Goes Apeshit Over IT [9]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Autistic Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Everyone is Alive Except Georgie Denbrough, Fuck Stephen King, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, I had to get in at least one with the turtle, Implied/Referenced Ableism, M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, SORRY YALL, Sorry again, Stanley Uris Lives, The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us, autistic author, eddie and stan: rip to georgie but im different, internalized ableism, stan doesn't even show up he's just talked about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-17 04:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortimer_Dead_Sea/pseuds/Mortimer_Dead_Sea
Summary: "It had been about a year since defeating IT when it started happening... [H]e noticed that his newer fanbase often said variations of the same idea on Tumblr and Twitter and YouTube comment sections.'He gives me strong neurodivergent vibes'...He definitely wasn’t autistic. He would’ve been diagnosed as a kid if he was.He just… Wasn’t the brightest."Richie's new gay fanbase keeps saying he has neurodivergent energy, which leads Richie to get a diagnosis.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: Fuck Stephen King: Mort Goes Apeshit Over IT [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1511162
Comments: 22
Kudos: 246





	Loud, Dumb, and Other Names for It

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is. My projection fic.  
A lot of my own process with realizing that I'm autistic went into writing this. I had my moment of "Richie is autistic" while watching IT (2017) when he was trying to comfort Ben outside of the pharmacy and failing so hard. So this was born.

It had been about a year since defeating IT when it started happening. Richie had come out publicly not too long ago, and in doing so, he got an influx of new fans and followers that all fell somewhere in the LGBTQ+ community. They were mostly teenagers and college students, but he was pretty used to that at this point. And he remembered being a teenager, and not having this, and he was more than willing to be the person that he didn’t have as a kid. He was happy knowing that he was somewhere to look to, and that people liked to laugh at the stories he told about his now boyfriend Eddie. Plus, of course, the rest of the Losers, minus all the weird clown bullshit.

But after a while, he noticed that his newer fanbase often said variations of the same idea on Tumblr and Twitter and YouTube comment sections.

_ “He gives me strong neurodivergent vibes” _

The first couple of times, Richie didn’t think anything of it. However, as he saw it more and more, he finally broke down and googled what neurodivergent meant.

_ “Displaying or characterized by autistic or other psychologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior; not neurotypical” _

He sat back and stared at it for a while. He definitely wasn’t autistic. He would’ve been diagnosed as a kid if he was.

He just… Wasn’t the brightest.

“What’s with that face?”

Richie looked up to see Eddie in the doorway of the living room.

“You look constipated,” Eddie added. He paused, and then looked like he wanted to say something else, so Richie decided to start talking before Eddie went on and on about how Richie’s diet should have more bran in it, and how there were laxatives in the medicine cabinet.

“A bunch of people keep talking about how I have ‘neurodivergent energy’ or whatever, and I’m not sure how I feel about it,” he explained.

Eddie’s eyebrows furrowed and then he crossed the room and sat down next to Richie so their sides were pressed up against each other. He looked at Richie’s laptop screen, reading over the definition that google had provided.

“Well, you could always bring it up to Mark,” Eddie said.

Mark. Richie’s therapist. Richie had agreed to start seeing a therapist if Eddie went as well. Richie knew that Eddie really needed to go to therapy if he was going to unlearn the forty years worth of problems he had surrounding medicine and doctors. Richie also knew that his problems with medicine and doctors would make him hesitant to go see a therapist. And Richie, knowing he probably needed to go to therapy himself, had struck the deal with him so that he wouldn’t be the only one going. And now they each went to therapy once every two weeks.

It had been working out for Eddie so far. He had slowly but surely been emptying out the medicine cabinet with Richie right behind him, arms around his waist every time something new went into the trash. A few things were able to stay, such as the tylonel, tums, and laxatives. Practical things. And his inhaler was still around, but it rested in the cabinet instead of on his person.

Richie had been slowly introducing him to foods he barely ate as a kid as well. It was a miracle that thirty years without gluten and dairy hadn’t completely fucked up his body’s ability to digest them. He ate dairy and gluten without the knowledge of his mother when he was a kid, but that was only because Richie was able to convince him with bribes of pasta and ice cream whenever they got lunch together as kids.

The therapy had been good for Richie, too. He couldn’t tell the whole story, but the Losers had all agreed upon a story they _ could _ tell people, and he talked about that, about seeing his childhood friends nearly die in front of him, and his anxieties about coming out publicly. Plus, when it came to all the internalized shit he and Eddie shared, it was good for them to be able to talk to their therapists and to each other. It was a good deal all around. They were lucky that it had been going so well for them.

So yeah, maybe talking to his therapist about it would be a good idea.

“Yeah, I will,” he said. He shut his laptop and put it on the coffee table before pulling Eddie closer to him. “How was work?”

“Fine,” Eddie replied as he got comfortable in Richie’s arms. “Pretty uneventful.”

“That’s good,” Richie said.

“How was your day?” Eddie asked.

Richie kind of didn’t want to admit that he had spent hours turning that definition over and over in his head, and so just said, “Uneventful.”

They sat there in silence, and Richie felt a sense of gratitude wash over him at how lucky he was when he realized that “uneventful” was not a luxury he had a year ago.

He looked down at Eddie, whose eyes were shut, head resting against Richie’s chest. He almost didn’t have this. 

He remembered watching Eddie get stabbed through the chest, and then running towards him, lifting him off the ground so he could bring him to a safer place. He remembered dropping to his knees behind a rock, still holding Eddie bridal style, and Eddie looking up at him with a sort of awed confusion in his eyes before he grasped Richie’s face and kissed him.

“I felt safe,” Eddie had explained to him later. “I was so surprised at how safe I felt, even while I was dying. I had just spent the last couple days remembering how much I loved you and I felt like I had to kiss you before I died.”

And Eddie _ had _ died, while Richie held him in his arms. Richie remembered pulling him to his body, not caring about all the blood and dirt and gray water while he sobbed and begged to whatever gods may be listening to please, _ please _ give him back, Richie _ couldn’t lose him, _ not _ again. _

Then something in his head throbbed, and he saw a turtle. Or a god. Or a Turtle God. Richie wasn’t sure what it was, but it was turtle shaped, and that Turtle Shaped Something had not only brought Eddie back, but also _ Stan _for good measure, and then all seven of them were fighting It, just like when they were kids. And this time, they had won for good.

Richie pulled Eddie tighter to his body, and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. He saw Eddie smile.

Yeah. He was pretty damn lucky.

\----

He brought up the problem to Mark the next time he saw him, and Mark said, “Honestly, I can see where they’re coming from. There are definitely things you do that could be stemming from something else. If you want, I could refer you to someone who could give you a neuro eval.”

That was not the reaction Richie had been anticipating. Well, he supposed it couldn’t hurt. Neuro evals were apparently _ very _ expensive, but luckily, he could afford it.

With insurance, the eval would cost $400, and would take place over two days.

They were probably the most boring two days of Richie’s life, and he was grateful when they were done. Honestly, if it turned out that there was nothing in his head but good old PTSD from all the clown bullshit, he’d kind of be annoyed that he did it all for nothing.

A couple weeks went by, and then his results came in the mail. It was Eddie’s day off, and he got the mail once he had woken up. Richie knew something was off because Eddie wasn’t still sorting through envelopes and grumbling about bills when he came back in. He shut the door behind him, eyes trained on Richie, one envelope held just above his head while the rest of the stack was held in the hand hanging at his side.

Richie’s eyebrows furrowed, and he was about to ask what was going on, but then he remembered those tests he had taken weeks ago, and his face loosened, mouth parted open slightly. Eddie tossed the rest of the mail onto the kitchen table, and the two of them rushed to the living room, plopping down on the couch. Eddie handed the envelope over, and Richie turned it over in his hand a couple of times before staring at the front, addressed to him from the office he had spent many long hours in. He exhaled hard through his nose and then tore it open with a finger, pulling out a packet. At the top of the first page was exactly what Richie had expected, and exactly what he hadn’t expected.

_ “Autism spectrum disorder” _

Richie stared at those three words, running them over and over again in his head.

“Rich…” Eddie’s voice was soft, as was his touch as he placed a hand on Richie’s arm. “Are you alright?”

“I-… This isn’t-... I’m not-...” Richie just kept staring at the paper. “I don’t know…”

Eddie nodded. “That’s ok. You have a therapy appointment tomorrow. You can bring it up if you want?”

Richie nodded. That sounded like a good idea.

“Ok,” Eddie said. He rubbed up and down Richie’s arm. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Richie thought for a moment. There was so much going on in his head right now, and he had no idea how to say any of it.

“Maybe tomorrow,” Richie decided. “After I talk to Mark about it.”

Eddie nodded, and Richie stuffed the packet back into the envelope before putting it off to the side. His hands were shaking ever so slightly.

“Why don’t we take it easy today?” Eddie asked. “We can watch a movie or something. Take your mind off it?”

Richie finally looked over at Eddie. His gaze was soft and concerned, patient and loving. Richie was so damn lucky.

He smiled, and took the hand resting on his arm into both of his own. “That sounds great.”

Eddie smiled back, and they got up to go pick a movie and make some food.

The next day, Richie made sure to grab the packet before heading to his therapy appointment. It sat on the passenger seat next to him, and he glanced at it occasionally as he drove to his therapist’s office ten minutes away. Then he took it up with him as he sat in the waiting room, leg bouncing. He could hear voices on the other side of the door, and then he heard another door open and then swing shut. Then the door in front of him opened up.

“Good afternoon, Richie,” Mark said with a calm smile. He stopped out of the way so that Richie could enter the room.

“Hey Mark,” Richie said as he slid past and then plopped down one one of the couches in the room.

Mark crossed the room and then sat down in his desk chair across from Richie, leaning back and crossing one leg over the other.

“So,” he said. “Is there anything in particular you want to talk about?”

“Uh…” Richie held up the packet. “I got my test results.”

“Based on your reaction, I’m assuming something turned up?” Mark said.

Richie nodded and handed over the packet. Mark read the front page and nodded thoughtfully. “Alright. So.” He looked back at Richie. “How are you feeling?”

“I… I feel like I’m being lied to,” Richie said. “Like… Wouldn’t I have been diagnosed when I was younger if I was really autistic? And I’m not like other autistic people.”

“Ok, let’s talk about each of those things one by one,” Mark started. “Your first issue is that you would have been diagnosed when you were younger. But people are learning more and more about autism every day, and so the ability to diagnose is getting better. And besides, nowadays, people still slip through the cracks, and people self diagnose all the time. So it is entirely possible that you were one of the people that slipped through the cracks.”

Richie nodded, and dipped his head down. He had always had trouble looking at people’s faces, and he was still getting used to looking at Mark’s.

Was that an autism thing?

“And your second point,” Mark continued. “What do you think sets you apart from other autistic people?”

Richie thought about everything he had learned about autistic people.

“I mean… I always thought they were little kids who never talked and took the special classes,” Richie admitted. “I had good grades when I was younger. All my bad grades were behavior stuff. My grades didn’t get worse until I got to high school.”

Mark nodded. “Well autism _ is _a spectrum. Traits show up in a variety of different ways. There are plenty of autistic children who do great in school when they’re younger and then when school gets more difficult, they aren’t as equipped to handle it. It’s also very common for neurodivergent people to do great in school but get marked down for poor behavior.”

Richie nodded, and then they sat in silence for a while while Richie absorbed and processed all the information he had just been given.

“So…” Richie exhaled hard through his nose and then looked back up at Mark. “I’m autistic.”

Mark nodded. “Seems like it, yes.”

_ “So…” _ Richie nodded his head slowly. “Now what? I don’t exactly need accommodations for my job.”

“Well, what happens next is up to you,” Mark said. “You can just go about your life with this knowledge in your head and not do anything about it. There are also just little things you can do to make your life a little easier.

“Like what?” Richie asked.

“Well, what’s something you had struggled with in high school?”

Richie racked his brain for a few moments before saying, “I was terrible at English tests?”

“Why?”

“‘Cause I was shit at reading.”

“Alright,” Mark said with another nod. “For a lot of neurodivergent people, font size and type can help with reading. So you could put documents into a different font and it might be easier to read.”

Richie nodded. This was fine. He could deal with it. “Ok. What else?”

\----

Richie had a list of a bunch of little things he could do to make his day to day just a little easier. Every time he looked it over, he felt a great sense of both relief and fear.

Same went for when Eddie left a toy on his desk with a note next to it. Richie found it when he had woken up, Eddie having gone to work already.

_ This might help you focus a little better, _ the note had read.

Richie knew it was a tangle, a type of stim toy. It was a sweet and thoughtful gesture, Richie knew that too, but there was still that same sense of both gratefulness and hesitation. It probably _ would _ help, and Richie would be glad for that, but that’s what was so scary. That acknowledgment of this thing he had been convinced _ other _ people had, not him.

But he remembered what Mark had told him during their last session. That this could ultimately be a positive thing, knowing and being able to work with it to make things easier on himself with those little every day to day things he had written in a list on his desk. 

So he picked up the tangle, and went about his day with it in his hands. It was… Nice. It did help his constant energy, having that outlet. He smiled slightly to himself. Yeah. Maybe this _ was _a good thing.

But there was still _ something _ itching at the back of his head, something that felt like when he was on the cusp of remembering something else from Derry but not quite having it yet.

He decided to try out some of the other things on his list.

\----

“What are you doing?” Eddie asked.

Richie was sitting in front of his computer, a list of fonts open for his contemplation. He turned the tangle over and over in his hands. “Mark gave me a list of fonts I could try to help me read better.”

Eddie nodded. “Do you have trouble reading?”

“Remember all the tutoring you did for me in high school because I barely understood the reading?”

“Ah.” Eddie looked at the list. “Comic sans?”

“As much as I love to give shit to comic sans,” Richie said. “Apparently it’s easy to read.”

Eddie hummed, hands coming to rest on the back of Richie’s chair. Richie opened up the document that held his jokes for his next routine and began to go down the list of fonts, eventually stopping at verdana. 

Then he just _ stared._

“Rich?” Eddie placed a careful hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I can read it,” Richie said. He continued to scroll through the document. “Holy shit. _ Eds.” _ He looked up at Eddie with shocked eyes. “I can _ read.” _

“That’s great!” Eddie said. Then he saw how shiny Richie’s eyes had gotten, and his face twisted in concern. “Richie. _ Are you ok?” _

It suddenly hit all at once. Richie remembered being in high school. He had always been the loud kid, the rude kid, he obnoxious kid. But when he was younger, elementary and middle school, at least he had good grades. He may have been tough to handle, but he was a _ good _ kid, because he was a _ smart _kid. 

But in high school, his grades started to drop. He became the dumb guy, the idiot, the dipshit, the guy who needed his friends’ saint-like patience to stay afloat because he never understood what his teachers told him and what his textbooks said. And his attitude never changed. He became a problem student through and through. He remembered years of smiling and laughing with everyone who made jabs at him, and making jokes in turn so they would laugh. After all, that’s what he was good at. What he was good _ for. _ And he just took all the jabs and jokes because he had been convinced they were right. That he was just the loud and dumb and it was his own fault for not trying hard enough.

But now. Now he knew what it was. He knew what to _ call _ it. He knew it _ wasn’t his fault. _

_ “I’m not stupid.” _ And then the tears started to fall. 

“Woah, Rich.” Eddie wrapped his arms around him, resting Richie’s head against his lower chest. “You were never stupid.”

“Part of me gets that.” He sniffed wetly. “But a bigger part of me was convinced I was just dumb and that’s why I sucked at school. And I had no reason to believe otherwise.”

Eddie carded a hand through his hair, gentle and caring.

“I do a lot of stupid shit,” Richie continued. “And I’ve always been pretty loud and obnoxious and rude. I always thought that was just me, and all I was good for was trying to make people laugh, even if I was just getting laughed at.”

He dropped the tangle into his lap, and then grasped at the back of Eddie’s shirt to ground himself. He wasn’t sure where all of this was coming from, but it felt like emptying out a closet in the back of his mind. “It was so easy to just be the funny guy so nobody saw what I was actually like. It’s always been easier to just pretend I’m fine all the time. I always thought people would like me more if I just kept it all to myself.”

“Rich…” Eddie’s voice was gentle, and caring. “You wanna know something?”

Richie sniffed again. “What?”

“I won’t be able to help with all of this, but I can tell you this. You are loud. And obnoxious. And you do a lot of stupid shit,” Eddie said. “But I love those things about you.”

Richie pulled his head out of Eddie’s shirt and looked up at him. “What?”

“This isn’t a matter of you being all of those things and me loving you _ despite _ all of it,” Eddie reiterated. “And I know the rest of the Losers feel the same. And that would be true with or without the diagnosis. But-” Eddie gestured to the screen. “-if having it is helping, then I’m glad you got it. You’re not stupid, not like they all said you were. I know I sometimes call you dumb or stupid, but I’ve never meant it.” Richie hadn’t said that Eddie poking fun at him had bothered him, but he seemed to be reading between the lines. “And I always said it out of love. Because that’s what we do. We tease the shit out of each other because we love each other.”

Richie gave a small smile. Eddie bent down next to him and lifted his classes enough to wipe at the small tear streaks that had formed on his face.

“It's ok to be loud an obnoxious,” Eddie said. Then he added, with all the fondness in the world, "I love you, dipshit."

Then Richie grinned, larger than life. “I love you, too, asshole.”

It would take a while for Richie to get through all his own baggage, and he made a mental note to bring it up to Mark at his next appointment, but having a name for it, and having Eddie next to him, made it all the easier.

So maybe he _ was _ loud and dumb. But maybe that was ok.

**Author's Note:**

> For real though, sometimes being neurodivergent means being loud and dumb. Embrace it. It’s a beautiful thing.  
My Twitter, where I yell about IT (and Reddie) a lot: @mortimerdeadsea


End file.
